From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 02 Feb 2006 - 21:48:37 GMT
One thing from that discussion a while ago:
"Without some true randomness in the universe, there can be no
free will" was iirc approximately the assertion at one point?
But it struck me recently; what sort of free will can one
imagine one would have if the source of that apparent free will
was simply a dice roll to select from a predefined (weighted)
set of alternatives? Surely a world where everything is
determined (but unknowable) gets much closer to the free will
that we crave? Fine, it was always gonna happen that way, but
the point is that it was always the case that you exercised your
free will, the principle of which is not actually violated
because the choice was there and nothing affected your making
it, but you would always in an exact repeat of the universe have
picked that!
So you do have free will without randomness, in fact it is
impossible _with_ it; but the way in which you will use it could
always in principle be calculated (if we had perfect knowledge,
including how to predict quantum weirdness -- the present
theories suck obviously).
Nice letter in Nature last week that reminds us that the
existence of true randomness is only a theory.
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk
http://psidev.sf.net/
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